Planet Ireland Is ‘Bloody Great’

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Planet Ireland Is ‘Bloody Great’

January 23, 2008

By Paddy Clancy

IRELAND, despite all its imperfections, is still “a bloody great place.” That’s the verdict of the Lonely Planet guide’s latest 764-page edition on Ireland.

Yet, there’s at least one hue missing from the 40 Shades of Green that Johnny Cash made world-famous with a song he penned in 1961. We don’t include the all-important “eco-green.”

The guide quotes the European Environment Agency which rates Ireland’s carbon footprint per person at more than double the global average. It claims that everyone has a car, which results in longer traffic lines and a stressed-out infrastructure.

Guide author Fionn Davenport, a Dubliner, says Ireland is also a long way from meeting its Kyoto Protocol requirements for reduced emissions.

We also love to complain, are obsessed with the “rip-off culture” and we make a sport out of wallowing in false modesty.

Self-deprecation is a much-admired art form while another trait is begrudgery. We’re also low on self-esteem, very suspicious of praise and tend not to believe anything nice that’s said about us.

“The Irish wallow in false modesty like a sport,” says the guide.

Still, there’s much to attract visitors. The book says, “At the heart of it all is the often breathtaking scenery, still gorgeous enough to make your jaw drop despite the best efforts of developers to scar some of the most beautiful bits with roundabouts, brutal suburbs and summer bungalows.”

Highlights include Dublin pubs, Inishmór island, the Hook peninsula and west Belfast.

The neolithic Brú na Bóinne site is “one of the most extraordinary sites in Europe,” while seldom-praised Carlow “has a beauty all of its own.”

Businesses in Dublin’s Temple Bar, one of the city’s main tourism magnets, are unlikely to be happy about the description of the area as containing “crappy tourist shops and dreadful restaurants serving bland, overpriced food.”

It also has “huge characterless bars” and “pools of vomit and urine that give the whole area the aroma of a sewer.”

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